When people hear a recorded phrase looped numerous times, they begin to hear it as a song.

If you’ve wasted enough time on YouTube, you know this all too well. It was first discovered by Diana Deutsch in 1995, when she was fine tuning a commentary. She noticed the phrase “sometimes behave so strangely,” which was on a loop, started to sound like it was being sung instead of spoken. 

It was later investigated further in 2008 and 2011. Three groups of subjects listened to a sentence and then ten presentations of a few words out of that sentence. The listeners judged whether they heard the phrase as speech or like a song. In all cases, the listeners thought it sounded a bit like a song. 

The interesting thing is that for this phenomenon to occur, the phrase has to be repeated exactly the same over and over- if there’s any variation, the brain just perceives it as words. This was further proven when listeners reproduced what they were hearing: they all repeated the words in a way that sounded more like a song. This could go a long way to explaining many of those videos out there on Youtube. 

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Paper Wasps are one of the few life forms on the planet that have facial recognition ability.

Paper wasps are also known as umbrella wasps and are about an inch in length. They gather fibers from dead wood and plant stems, mix it with their saliva, and make water resistant nests that look like a brown, papery material, which his kind of where their name comes from.

Thankfully, paper wasps aren’t aggressive and will generally only attack if their nest is threatened. Their sting can cause anaphylactic shock in some humans and are generally not wanted around where we live. It was recently discovered that the paper wasp has facial recognition abilities.

A study done at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor found that their facial recognition abilities are comparable to that of humans and chimps. They are able to recognize other paper wasps and associate it with safety. It is surprising and bizarre, because not many life forms on Earth have that ability.

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“Urchin” is an old name for a hedgehog, which explains how the sea urchin got its name!

So, the sea urchin is a small, spiny, globular animal that is related to the star fish. They live in every ocean and are often black or dull shades of green, purple, olive, brown, and red. 

Sea urchins have tube feet, which are part of the water vascular system and are seen on the star fish, too. They eat algae and move slowly. Sea otters, wolf eels, and triggerfish prey on the sea urchin. Oddly enough, their gonads are a delicacy in many places! 

Anyways, the world urchin is an old name for a hedgehog, so it makes sense that a spiny globular animal in the sea would be named after the hedgehog. Just like the hedgehog, sea urchins use their spines that stick out from their bodies as protection against predators. 

They can poke through human skin, too, but they aren’t dangerous. The spines are around one to three centimeters in length. Be careful with sea urchins in the Caribbean, though, because their spines can be anywhere from ten to thirty centimeters long.

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The only ads that run on the Disney Channel are for Disney shows and sponsors.

If you’ve got TV, go and turn on the Disney Channel and wait for a commercial. You’ll notice a large amount of self promotion and the occasional ad followed by, for example, “Target is a proud sponsor of Disney Channel.” The reason goes back to only 2002. 

In 2002, the channel began to carry commercial breaks within shows, instead of just between them. Initially, all of these promos were for its own programming, and not long after for Disney films and home video releases. The reason for this decision was that the Disney Channel executives felt commercial advertising could confuse younger viewers who couldn’t tell the difference between regular programming and ads. 

A secondary reason was due to the prevention of license fee increases for acquired feature films. Today, Disney is a little bit more loose with the restrictions placed on in-channel advertising, but there’s still a huge amount of self promotion. Overall, it can be considered a pretty good thing, because it’s a partial escape from how much advertising children see. 

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Twix is a combination of the words Twin Sticks!

Twix is made my Mars, Inc and was originally made in the UK in 1967. It didn’t make it to the US until 1979. Mars, Inc was founded in 1911 in Tacoma, Washington. The Twix is made of a biscuit with a thin layer of chocolate followed by a layer of caramel with the whole thing coated in chocolate. 

Its name came from a combination of the words twin and sticks. Twix was called Raider in much of Europe until it was officially changed in 1991 to match its internationally known name. 

Here in the US, the Twix bar is produced in Cleveland, Tennessee. There are many variations of the Twix candy bar. In North America we have the Twix Peanut Butter candy bar where peanut butter replaces the caramel. 

Other interesting variants are the Twix Coconut, Twix Java, and Twix Mint. Many odd types of Twix were introduced in the early 1990s, but they didn’t last long at all. 

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